Sunday, 31 July 2011

Evolution research is not known for its critical approach but for its just so stories.

Joel Kontinen

Have you ever wondered why some people have bigger eyes than others? According to a recent study conducted at the University of Oxford, the answer in not blowing in the wind but the puzzle can be solved by eye evolution.

Eiluned Pearce and Robin Dunbar measured the skulls of 73 individuals who had lived at different latitudes. According to New Scientist, they found out that ”the overall skull volume and the volume of the eye socket increased with latitude”.

They published their research in the journal Biology Letters.

Some other researches are not convinced that Pearce and Dunbar interpreted their data correctly. Chris Kirk, an anthropologist at the University of Texas in Austin, says that one would have to measure the eyes before reaching the conclusion the Oxford researchers did.

This kind of adaptation does not have anything to do with Darwinian evolution since humans (and animals) have been created with the ability to adapt to their environments. This is for instance seen in skin colour. In the animal kingdom, long-furred dogs live near the poles and short-furred dogs nearer the Equator.

Darwinian evolution needs just so -stories because it lacks real evidence.

Saturday, 30 July 2011

The media often use the concept “occupied territory” of the West Bank of the River Jordan. However, the history of the region shows that an entirely different interpretation is much more likely to be true.

The West Bank was part of the area allotted to the Jewish homeland by the League of Nations but the Arabs never accepted this decision and eventually came up with their own version of whose land it was - and is.

This brief video clip reveals some interesting details about the history of the region:

Charles Darwin had a profound influence on the thinking of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

The media have not done a good job at source criticism in characterising Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik as a Christian fundamentalist. A closer examination of the beliefs of Breivik, who recently killed 77 people in Oslo and on the island of Utoeya, shows that his views of Christianity are anything but orthodox.

Dr. John G. West of Discovery Institute has analysed Breivik’s 1518-page manifesto, "European Declaration of Independence," which suggests that he had a worldview that differs considerably from what the media have presented to us.

For Breivik, Christianity is primarily a cultural concept. He thinks that the ancient Norse pagan god Odin could well be a part of Christianity. He is not sure whether God exists but thinks that God is useful for his agenda because people could be expected to be more responsive to Christianity than to nationalism, white supremacy or neo-paganism.

Breivik’s ideology resembles that of Per-Eric Auvinen, the 2007 Jokela school shooter in neighbouring Finland, and the extreme environmentalist views of Pentti Linkola. He believes that there are far too many people in the world so that the west should not aid the starving people in Africa but let nature take care of the surplus population.

Breivik laments that the Nazis spoilt the reputation of eugenics although the idea as such was good. He believes that "the Nordic race” has ”rare characteristics that have been acquired through an evolutionary process which has taken more than 1 million years". These, he thinks, should be preserved.

This is something that the media have not told us. Labelling a murderer a Christian fundamentalist seems to be more acceptable to the liberal media than calling him an extreme Darwinist or even a Social Darwinist although these would characterise Breivik’s ideology more accurately than the media have done.

However, Breivik’s ideology does not nullify the obvious conclusion that he is a psychopath and that there really is evil in the world.

While Breivik admits that The Origin of Species is one of the most important books he has read, one cannot directly blame Charles Darwin for inspiring the Norwegian mass murders, but as Dr. West states at the end of his longish analysis, ideas have consequences.

Source:

West, John G. 2011. The Professor and the Madman. Evolution News and Views. (27 July).

Friday, 29 July 2011

The Second Jewish Temple. Model in the Israel Museum. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

Recently, Israeli archaeologists found a tiny golden bell in the Old City of Jerusalem. One centimetre (half an inch) in diameter, it could once have been part of a priest’s garment.

The Old Testament book of Exodus mentions that golden bells were sewn in the hem of a priest’s robe:

“Make pomegranates of blue, purple and scarlet yarn around the hem of the robe, with gold bells between them. The gold bells and the pomegranates are to alternate around the hem of the robe. Aaron must wear it when he ministers. The sound of the bells will be heard when he enters the Holy Place before the LORD and when he comes out, so that he will not die.” (Exod. 28:33-35, NIV).

We should not be surprised by the find. The Bible describes real history and real events. Even tiny details can often be verified by discoveries.

Source:

Bell from 2,000 years ago pulled from ancient sewer in Old City of Jerusalem.The Washington Post 24 July 2011.

Wednesday, 27 July 2011

Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian lady, is facing the death penalty. She is one of the 200 million Christians currently facing persecution. Her crime? She said: “Our Christ sacrificed His life on the cross for our sins. ... Our Christ is alive.”

Pakistani Muslims interpreted this as blasphemy. The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) has designed an online petition to free Asia Bibi, a wife and mother with small children.

According to the VOM website, “The Voice of the Martyrs has set the goal of gathering one million signatures from around the world on behalf of our sister Asia. VOM will deliver the petition, along with the list of signers, to the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, D.C.”

Over 190, 000 people have already signed the petition. Please add your name to the list here.

Sunday, 24 July 2011

Genesis 4 describes the consequences of the Fall. Cain killed his brother Abel. Image from the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum.

Joel Kontinen

The recent bombing and the deadly shooting incident in Norway that took the lives of over 90 people caused the media to ponder the reason for the atrocities. Sari Torvinen, a reporter of the Finnish daily Aamulehti, asked a hard, yet pertinent question: ”What if evil exists?”

If we think about the rule of terror in the Soviet Union under Stalin, the holocaust of the Jews during the Second World War, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Idi Amin’s tyranny in Uganda as well as the genocides in Rwanda and Sudan, we will notice that the question is still very timely.

In contrast to many school shootings and for instance the 9/11 attacks in New York, this time the perpetrator was probably not an atheist, who had assumed a Darwinian worldview, or an Islamist relying on the promise of a reward in paradise but a Norwegian, who obviously considered himself a patriot.

Unfortunately, the political climate in Europe is beginning to resemble that of the years between World War I and II when great ideologies were struggling for hegemony in the heart of Europe. Fear of the spread of communism gave rise to right-wing movements that saw their mission as defending the continent's cultural heritage.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many Europeans thought that the threat came from the Islamic world. The bombings in London and Madrid showed that the fear was not entirely unfounded.

It seems that Anders Breivik, who acknowledged he had committed the murders, had had enough of the inability of western Europe to rise up to the challenge of Islam and wanted to send the Norwegian government a macabre message that reminds us that we are living in a world that is stained by sin.

Already at the beginning in Genesis 4, sin lead from murder to murder.

However, even in a world that is as evil as it is, the gospel has the power to liberate us from sin, hatred, fear and the vicious circle of revenge, since Jesus Christ has carried our sins to the cross.

Christianity is not an ideology but it has to do with new life that is no longer focused on one’s ego but on God, who ”became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14, NKJV) and also gave us His moral commandments.

If all people would observe the golden rule (i.e., “whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them”, Matt. 7:6, NKJV) and other teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, no one would want to take the life of one’s neighbour.

Friday, 22 July 2011

The turtle causes problems for Darwinian evolution. It appears in the fossil record 230 million years ago and has hardly changed since then. Moreover, according to a recent Nature news article, ”molecules and fossils don't always agree, and this has created a lot of confusion for the turtle.”

In other words, evolutionists don’t know what the turtle evolved from.

Research published in Biology Letters this week attempts to find a place for the turtle among its assumed Darwinian relatives.

However, it does not address the biggest dilemma of all: why have turtles remained turtles for so long? After all, evolution assumes that tiny four-footed mammals eventually evolved into humans in the same time.

All living fossils, such as the horseshoe crab, share this same problem.

Thursday, 21 July 2011

Readers of Los Angeles Times were recently entertained with Darwinian monkey tales.

Joel Kontinen

German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (1804- 1872) was an early advocate of the view that man made God in his image. It is no secret that he did not have any empirical evidence to support his claim but it sprang from his espousal of atheism.

In a recent opinion piece in Los Angeles Times, J. Anderson Thomson and Clare Aukofer attempted to clothe Feuerbach’s old thesis in a scientific garb:

“In recent years scientists specializing in the mind have begun to unravel religion's ‘DNA.’ They have produced robust theories, backed by empirical evidence (including ‘imaging’ studies of the brain at work), that support the conclusion that it was humans who created God, not the other way around. And the better we understand the science, the closer we can come to ‘no heaven … no hell … and no religion too.’ "

However, it is beyond the ability of brain scans to find the answer to puzzling theological questions. Anderson, a trustee of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, certainly has his bias that makes the whole opinion piece suspect. His mentor Dawkins is not actually known for letting facts spoil a good theory (or even a bad one).

Anderson and Aukofer base their thesis on the assumed evolution of humans, explaining religion as a means of survival in a typically Darwinian just-so way.

Actually, if brain research has taught us anything, it has shown that the brain is much more complicated than we ever thought and that it is designed extremely well.

The former quote is from the webpages of New Scientist and the latter from the journal Nature.

What do they really tell us about tail-dropping animals and plants such as Arabidopsis? They suggest that both animals and plants have been designed to cope in a world that unlike the very good creation in Genesis is no longer perfect.

All the rest is pure speculation.

Sources:

Do it Again: Round-up of Regenerating Animals. New Scientist 13 July 2011.

Sunday, 17 July 2011

Butterflies come in a large variety of sizes and shapes. From the shape of their wings to their colour, each of them is amazingly unique.

What is more, the butterfly also changes its shape several times during its lifetime. The metamorphosis from egg to caterpillar, caterpillar to pupa (chrysalis) and pupa to adult butterfly would require a real miracle – something that Darwinian evolution is not capable of bringing about.

Everything in the butterfly has to change – and several times. Old cells are destroyed and used as raw material for completely new types of structures.

The butterfly’s organs will also be transformed. They have to be re-designed from start to finish. For instance, the brain and guts will be totally changed so that the butterfly becomes an entirely different animal.

Natural selection cannot cause this as it would have to know the result before it can begin to change the animal. And as Richard Dawkins puts it, the Darwinian watchmaker is blind, unable to see what it is doing and unable to plan ahead.

Humans have not been able to produce anything as sophisticated as the butterfly even with meticulous planning.

Illustra Media has produced a DVD on the development of the butterfly. Its trailer gives a good impression of this marvel of design:

Saturday, 16 July 2011

Charles Kingsley promoted evolution with his fable The Water-Babies. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Joel Kontinen

The popularity of Darwinian evolution is not based on evidence but it stems from a surprising fact, i.e., it has become part and parcel of western culture.

Evolution seemed to meet the intellectual needs of the Victorian elite in Britain in the mid-19th century. Characteristic of the time was the squalor of the working class that Charles Dickens depicted in his novels and the development optimism of the upper class.

Darwinism found a warm reception in a class society that also welcomed imperialism.

Recently, writing in the journal Science, Sam Kean discussed the relationship of Darwinism and the study of literature. By appealing to evolution, some scholars have attempted to explain man’s innate skill to make up stories.

The explanation is not very convincing.

Several British authors welcomed Darwinism at an early stage when many prominent scientists, such as Lord Kelvin and Louis Pasteur, rejected evolution. For instance, Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) promoted evolution with his fable The Water-Babies (1863), Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) with his novels and H. G. Wells (1866-1946) with his science fiction novel The Time Machine (1895).

Recent research has shown that Darwinian evolution cannot explain the intricate design of the cell, but this time authors are behind the times.

In the 1810s the Luddites attacked machinery in a textile factory. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

In the 1810s workers known as Luddites attacked machinery in textile factories in Britain. As the Industrial Revolution was picking up steam, they feared that machines would eventually replace them.

Opposition to new ideas has not become extinct in the 200 years following the early Luddite attacks. Recently, professor David Edgerton wrote an article in the journal Nature, pointing out that resistance to new ideas, inventions and innovations often comes from an unexpected source: scientists.

Edgerton says that just before World War II the science advisors of the British government did not for instance understand the value of anti-aircraft missile systems and resisted their development. During the war, Churchill’s own Luddites (as Edgerton calls them) in effect hampered the British war effort.

Professor Edgerton admits that Luddism is not necessarily a bad thing since scepticism can prevent wasting money and resources on overly expensive projects.

Edgerton’s view of Luddism applies well to the ongoing discussion on Darwinian evolution and intelligent design. Many scientists still resist anything that smacks of design, although recent discoveries suggest strongly that evolution is unable to explain the origin and biodiversity of life.

Ideology often prevents scientists from acknowledging that all living beings and systems have been designed wonderfully and intelligently.

Recently, Scientific American published an article on the consequences of the 1987 supernova explosion that obviously produced "copious amounts of dust grains made of carbon, silicates and possibly iron" into interstellar space.

At the end of the article, Haley Gomez, an astrophysicist at Cardiff University in Wales, says that even humans are made from interstellar dust.

This is not far from what Genesis says about the creation of man. God created Adam from the dust of the earth (but not from interstellar dust).

According to the evolution-based worldview, the entire universe was formed from nothing without any kind of plan or design.

The view is full of problems as every natural system we know of - from the smallest (parts of the cell) to the largest (the universe)- bear signs of design.

Sunday, 10 July 2011

The earliest digital code is as old as Genesis. Protein synthesis is a complicated process that could hardly have come about through purely naturalistic means.

The cell looks as though it has been designed very intelligently. With its factories, machines and digital code functioning in an amazingly intricate way, it speaks of an intelligence that is greater than anything we have seen.

As the apostle Paul wrote: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20, NIV).

This brief animation produced by Creation Ministries International describes how this digital code functions in the cell:

Saturday, 9 July 2011

According to secular planetary models, Neptune should not exist. Image courtesy of NASA.

Joel Kontinen

Like the other gas planets, Neptune also causes problems for those who believe in naturalistic origins theories of the solar system, for instance the nebular hypothesis.

A recent Nature news article discusses some of the problems associated with Neptune. Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, thinks that “Neptune formed closer to the Sun, where the nebula was denser, then moved outwards” because “the solar nebula, from which planets condensed during the formation of the Solar System, should have been very diffuse” so far away from the centre of the cloud.

In other words, Neptune is a problem for secular models of the origin of the solar system.

What is more, in many other solar systems huge gas giants orbit very close to their sun.

The huge gas planets in our solar system are exceptions. They do not conform to secular models.

It seems that there is no place like this solar system or even Earth anywhere else in the universe.

Friday, 8 July 2011

The ossuary of Miriam, a relative of Caiphas, is not as famous as that of James, the brother of Jesus, but it speaks of the reliability of the Bible. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

A 2,000 year old ossuary or limestone bone box is the most recent evidence of the reliability of the Bible. Israeli archaeologists examined the box that was confiscated from tomb robbers three years ago. They concluded that both the ossuary and its inscription are genuine.

The inscription is rather interesting: ”Miriam daughter of Yeshua son of Caiaphas, priest of Maaziah from Beth Imri.”

The Gospels tell us about a high priest named Caiphas. The Caiphas mentioned in the ossuary might have been a relative of his since priesthood in Israel was hereditary and only the well-to-do (for instance, the high priest and his family) could afford limestone burial boxes.

Researchers from Tel Aviv University and Bar Ilan University examined the ossuary with powerful microscopes in order to rule out fraud.

At the end of June, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced that the ossuary and its inscription are both ancient and genuine.

Once again, archaeology confirms that the Bible tells us about real people who lived in a certain historical era. (You can read more about archaeological finds that support the historical reliability of the Bible here, here, here and here.)

Wednesday, 6 July 2011

Confuciusornis sanctus was a bird that according to evolutionary thinking lived at the time of the dinosaurs. Two long tail feathers can be seen in the fossilized bird. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

An international research team has developed a new method for finding out the colour of fossilized feathers, scales and skin by looking at traces left by melanin.

Melanin is a pigment that for instance gives skin and hair its colour.

Nature news recently reported on the breakthrough originally published in the journal Science last week. Researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, used x-rays to examine traces left by soft tissue in fossils by applying a method that did not damage the fossil.

The researchers were able to find out the colour of the feathers of Confuciusornis sanctus, for instance. C. sanctus was a crow-sized bird that lived at the time of the dinosaurs, some 120 “million years” ago.

They also compared fossils to corpses of animals that had died recently and noticed that fossilized squid ink closely resembles the ink of modern squids.

The researchers thus found out that a bird remains a bird and squid ink remains ink for a surprisingly long time.

Monday, 4 July 2011

Ilia Ivanov was a Russian biologist who tried to prove that man descended from the apes. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

In February 1926 the Russian biologist Ilia Ivanov set sail for French Guinea to capture chimpanzees for his tests. He wanted to produce a baby that would be part human and part ape.

Ivanov was a pioneer of artificial insemination and had succeeded in producing a zeedonk (a zebra-donkey hybrid) and a zubron (a cross between a European bison and a cow). He assumed that he could also cross a human and a chimpanzee.

The chimps Ivanov found were too young. He had to return later in 1926. This time he succeeded in inseminating three chimpanzees. After failing to get permission from the French authorities to inseminate women with chimp sperm, he took 20 chimpanzees to the Soviet republic of Abkhazia, where he carried on his tests.

Recently, Alexander Etkind, a specialist in Russian history at the University of Cambridge told New Scientist that the Bolsheviks wanted to show that the Bible was wrong and Darwin was right. Ivanov presented his project to the Soviet Academy of Sciences as part of the campaign against religion. A human-ape hybrid would be proof of evolution, be a boost for Soviet science and be effective anti-religious propaganda.

According to Etkind, the Soviet leaders could have had a more personal reason for supporting Ivanov’s experiments. Ivanov had also dabbled in eugenics and used blood exchanges between the old and young in an attempt to rejuvenate the old. The ageing Bolsheviks might well have put their trust in him in the hope that he would restore their youth.

Ivanov’s tests were a failure. The desired apeman failed to materialise. The Genesis principle of after its kind suggests why he could not have succeeded even in theory.

Saturday, 2 July 2011

Thomas Huxley was known as Darwin's bulldog. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

Recently, many Christians who consider themselves evangelicals have openly spoken in favour of theistic evolution. Christianity Today for instance doubted the testimony Genesis gives of Adam and Eve as real historical individuals.

Now it’s the turn of Christianity.com. It repeats old myths about the earliest public debate on evolution. In 1860, Samuel Wilberforce exchanged views on evolution with Thomas Huxley, who is known as Darwin’s bulldog.

Christianity.com erroneously describes the debate as one between science and religion and claims that Wilberforce did not know much about science.

Samuel Wilberforce, who was the son of the Christian politician and anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce (1759-1833), knew more about Charles Darwin’s theory than skeptics assume. Five weeks before the debate the bishop had written a review of The Origin of Species in the Quarterly Review.

In July 1860, Darwin himself wrote to his friend Joseph Hooker about Wilberforce’s criticism: ”I have just read the "Quarterly". It is uncommonly clever; it picks out with skill all the most conjectural parts, and brings forward well all the difficulties.”

It was Hooker who later claimed that Wilberforce used sarcasm in the debate instead of scientific arguments. Although Darwinists are fond of repeating this myth, one would have expected Christianity.com to check the reliability of its sources.

The writer(s) of the article did not do this. Instead, Christianity.com warns its readers of the dangers of rejecting “science”.

However, an ideology that has to rely on myths in order to be at least somewhat credible does not have much to do with empirical science.

A research team from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide recently reported on the discovery of a fossil with compound eyes as well-developed as those of the modern fly.

What makes the discovery interesting is that the fossil is assumed to be over half a billion years old.

The researchers found the “515 million”- year- old fossil on Kangaroo Island, South Australia. It had compound eyes with over 3,000 lenses. The team, led by Associate Professor Michael Lee, published their findings in the journal Nature on June 30th.

According to ScienceDaily, this Cambrian creature “would have seen the world with over 3000 pixels, giving its owner a huge visual advantage over its contemporaries.” This is a lot more that the living horseshoe crab (1,000 pixels). The record holder is the dragonfly with over 28,000 pixels.

According to the traditional understanding of Neo-Darwinian evolution, creatures should change slowly during immense periods of time. However, in contrast to what Darwin and Dawkins had speculated, the compound eye was fully-formed in the dawn of multicellular life.

Since then evolution has not succeeded in improving the compound eye.

Sources:

New Fossils Demonstrate That Powerful Eyes Evolved in a Twinkling. ScienceDaily 30 June 2011.